Blood and Water
by effywho
Summary: When Sherlock and John are targeted by a vengeful hit-man they are drawn into a world of killer alliances and tangled lies. As the fine line of morality blurs and loyalties are pushed to their very limits, is anyone here really in the right? A companion to Family Portraits, but not essential to have read both
1. The Taking

**Chapter one: the Taking**

The blue light of the police car blinks around the dark street, illuminating the hodgepodge of rundown flats and pavements littered with debris and fag-ends. Sherlock hadn't spoken in hours. His face was vacant, but Lestrade knew that he observed the surroundings keenly through his half-closed lids. Without the wail of the siren and the screech of tires the drive didn't feel right. They patrolled the streets at a crawl, moving noiselessly, listlessly, towards nowhere in particular. It had been four days now, and they where no closer to finding John.

Lestrade scratched at his ear, and it struck him that actually it wasn't the lack of noise that caused him this discomfort; that niggling feeling that things just weren't _right. _It was the lack of John. He looked again at Sherlock, who had his head pressed against the cold window as he peered outside, blinking furiously. Only three months ago that man was dead. Well, presumed dead. No, Lestrade amended, he was confirmed dead. The funeral was still fresh in his mind. The way John had stood, expressionless, and not said a word. He didn't speak much after the funeral, either. It was all Lestrade could do not to hunt down John's new flat and beg him to listen. He had wanted John to forgive him. Maybe that would have helped him to forgive himself; Maybe not. But he had resisted, and John drifted until he had escaped Lestrade's radar all together.

It was in the early hours of the morning when Lestrade decided that enough was enough. "At least for tonight," he told Sherlock, who protested heatedly as they drew up on Baker Street. "We both need to get some sleep. Off you go, then. I'll come back round tomorrow."

Sherlock grimaced at his driver; face wrinkling like there was a bad smell in the air. "I look forward to it, inspector. Run along now." And then he flounced out of the vehicle, leaving Lestrade to feel he had done something terrible. He supposed he should be used to it by now.

He didn't move right away. Instead he sat with his face in his hands, trying to gather his thoughts to a discernible pattern. For four days he had barely been home. Every hour that passed, Sherlock had fumed and simmered like an angry soup, his clothes had turned from outlandishly stylish to visibly rumpled and in need of a wash. The blue light flashed on, and Lestrade flicked it off in a rush of movement. It had only really been on for Sherlock's sake. It had calmed him a little. It made the whole operation feel more proper. He shook his head, leaning back into the leather seat. He considered the situation as a case. That felt wrong, so he stopped. It was John that was missing. Not some random member of the public. Steady, reliable John; John who, for all his pain, had forgiven Sherlock. Just this was certain: the only enemies John had were Sherlock's.

Lestrade didn't notice Sherlock's reappearance until he heard the tap, tap, tap of fist on window. He leaned over to open the side door, noting the flustered flash of Sherlock's eyes and the way he snapped the door open his haste. "Lestrade, you need to see this," was all he said.

There was no telling him twice. Before Lestrade could even lock the car, Sherlock had disappeared into the house, leaving the door hanging open in his wake. Sensing the urgency, Lestrade took the stairs two at a time, quickly navigating the hall and pushing through the open door of 221b.

The cause of Sherlock's distraction was not immediately evident. The full picture dawned on him like cold water running from his head to his toes. Moving to get a better look was difficult. His feet might have been stuck to the floor.

John was in his chair. Like a ghost, a pale white ghost, with a cup of tea. The hand that held the hot drink trembled, causing the liquid to ripple and splash over and onto his bruised and scabby knuckles. A closer look revealed blood. Blood is everywhere. It's matted into his hair, and plastered down one side of his face like a deep red oil slick. His foot beat a jumpy, anxious rhythm on the floor boards, but his face is set in stone. Sherlock is leaning over him; he's taking his pulse. Lestrade knows he should help. A gasp of air – from who, he doesn't know – breaks his stupor. Lestrade dials 999. He asks for an ambulance. Over his own voice he can hear Sherlock murmuring to John. He doesn't hear the words, and he doesn't try to. He hangs up.

"John, tell me what happened." Sherlock is talking loudly now. John's eyes are spinning from left to right and his stone mask is breaking.

Lestrade tries to be helpful. Mainly he's just glad John's alive. "Can you hear us, John?"

"Of course he can hear us, Lestrade," Sherlock scoffs. "He's just confused. In shock, I think."

"You think?" Lestrade doesn't hear Sherlock admit to less than 100% certainty very often.

"I'm not a doctor, am I?"

Lestrade apologises. He thinks that John might not be the only one in shock.

"Now, John," says Sherlock. "It's very important. What are your symptoms?"

They both hold their breath as John thinks about this.

"Symptoms," he repeats dully.

"Yes, yes," Sherlock is rubbing his hands together. He can see John processing what he's said. He waits for an answer.

"Listen." John surges forward in his seat. Sherlock's hand meets his shoulder, holding him upright.

"Symptoms, John. Symptoms"

John falls back. "Surgery hours are from 8 till 7."

"What?" mouths Lestrade, staring down at John like he just sprouted another head.

"Surgery hours are from 8 till 7," John says again. "You'll have to come back tomorrow."

Nobody knows what to say. Sherlock is secretly relieved that Lestrade thought to call an ambulance.

"Well," Sherlock says, "I'm not a doctor, but how hard can it be." He stands back and looks over John with beady eyes.

Lestrade is sceptical but he doesn't interrupt.

Finally, Sherlock folds his arms and nods to himself.

"Well then." Lestrade asks impatiently.

"I think he's been drugged."

Lestrade turns his head sharply, worried. "Drugged? Are you sure?"

"Yes. Actually, I'm very sure. Notice his pupils; they're like pinpricks. And the rash on his neck..."

He hadn't noticed that at all, but a quick look exposes a red, raw looking rash, spread lightly over his neck and reaching up his jaw.

"What else?" Lestrade prompts.

"...Slight delirium, heart rate was much too fast and irregular, and the fact that he's obviously been in enemy hands. I think he might be overdosing."

Lestrade spluttered and hurried to have a closer look at John himself. John didn't seem very aware of anything. His eyes didn't focus.

From the corner of the room, a bright light spread over them. Turning, Lestrade saw Sherlock leaning over a tall lamp, his finger on the switch, the other hand pointing at John. "There! Look at him."

John was cringing in the blare of the sudden lightness. He dropped the tea and covered his eyes, shaking as if under intimidation.

"Turn it off! For God's sake turn it off. You're hurting him."

Sherlock did turn the light off, but he sprung back to John's side with, what Lestrade considered, an inappropriate glee.

"No need to look so bloody pleased with yourself," he muttered.

Sherlock tilted his head, but otherwise ignored Lestrade's criticism; Focusing instead on finding the injury on John's head, from his new seat on the armrest.

"What do we do now?" Lestrade asked evenly.

"I don't know. I'm not usually on this end of the overdose."

The inspector rolled his eyes and went to run a glass of water, racking his brain for anything helpful.

"I'm sure we should keep him hydrated," he said.

When Lestrade approaches him with the water, John appears to panic. He straightens up and puts out a hand, a clear 'back off' signal. Sherlock ignores this, leaning against him as he continues to peer at the damage of the head wound.

John pushes his flatmate off and stumbles to his feet. Sherlock is a heap on the floor for approximately half a second, before he is up and watching intently.

"John, mate." Lestrade starts to move forward, but John blocks him.

He stands up tall, or as tall as a short man can stand. "Two, three, five, six,"

Lestrade looks to Sherlock, completely lost. The other man looks enthralled, and he can't understand it.

"Eight, two, nine,"

He hears the ambulance turn into the street, loud and official.

"One."

The detective is almost laughing, and fascination is written all over him. Once again, Lestrade can't make sense of it.

"What's he saying?"

"It's his service number," Sherlock replies, awed.

From downstairs new footsteps are heard; new voices. The ambulance crew approach.

John stands to attention.

"A positive," he says, and collapses.

* * *

**A/N:**

**-This story is basically an explanation of my elaborate head-canon, which I started to explain in Family Portraits (So yes, I will be explaining Daniel in this!)**

**-It turned into quite an elaborate story, so please do stick around if you want to read more**

**I welcome feedback!**


	2. Fever Dreams

**Chapter two: Fever Dreams**

The night sky passes overhead, and John can't tell the stars from the faces of the people around him. They blink and pale over him before they swirl into clouds of white smoke and rain. They could be cooking him for all he knows. And then the dusky dark is replaced by a harsh artificial glare; the smell of cleanliness and NHS hospitals is heavy in the air, and it now clings to him too. It smells like work.

There is a voice in his ear, and needle in his arm. He twists away from the pain and someone puts a cold hand on his forehead. Colours dance in front of his eyes. Beneath him, an engine rumbles and roars to life. Visions of blue and white spin past, blurring in and out of focus. Then a man, the man who had smirked and spoken with the soft, dangerous tone of someone who was just about done with rules.

The ambulance falls from reality and John is thrown into blackness. It's the sort of dark nothingness that smothers your face and screams in your ear. John is nearly sure that he's hallucinating, or dreaming, or dead.

The scene is like an echo. He sees himself, and he sees the man – the smirking, quiet man – and they are face to face, in a room identified only by its unspectacular plainness. The bare, stark white walls were unforgiving. From them John could find no clue to their whereabouts further than 'a building'.

"I have a deal," began the man.

Echo-John's jaw clenches. John remembers that. _Wait, _he had told himself. _Don't tell him to piss off yet. Not yet..._

"A deal I think you will be interested in."

Echo-John grinds his teeth and the room fades like bad reception on a TV. But the audio continues, feeding right into his brain. Real-John coughs and struggles. There is a tube down his throat, and someone holds him to the bed.

"You know who I am."

John hears himself, but the voice distorts like a scratched record. "I do. And I'm not interested."

Someone leans over and his light is blocked. The mist thickens. The white room is illuminated before him.

"I want to hire you."

"No."

"I know _Sherlock Holmes _has already staked a claim on you. But I can offer you more money, a bigger job, a better rush."

"If you think I help him for money –"

"John..."

A familiar voice breaks some of the dream-echo, and the clouds clear to show Sherlock. His face is drawn.

"Nearly there, John," Sherlock says, and his deep voice is strained.

"Yeah," John tries to reply. But no noise is made and his throat burns. He groans, and next to Sherlock there is the smirking man.

"Here's the thing, Watson," the smirking, and now angry, man says. He throws a cigarette to the floor, which bursts into flames before disappearing altogether. "I don't think you understood my deal, because it wasn't a fucking question."

The tube is still sitting uncomfortably somewhere in his throat. He coughs again and pain erupts in his chest.

The smirking man smirks. "Don't get up."

"Fuck you."

John wonders how he spoke. He doesn't know which reality he is in, or which, if indeed any, is real. His head throbs.

"You know, Watson. You made a powerful enemy today. You made this personal. Be ready."

The white room flicks back to life. Echo-John is shaking his head. He looks more worn, more tired, than before. Time has passed, and the smirking man doesn't smirk anymore.

When this John speaks, the sound is rusted and dry. "I won't help you. As for you, take my advice: Leave London."

The no-longer-smirking man raises an eyebrow. "What's at stake?"

Echo-John looks seriously at his captor. "All our lives," he says.

An ambush breaks the scene; the moment two masked attackers boycotted the supposed mercy of the no-longer-smirking man. John remembered the words, as he remembers the cold street under his body: "You won't remember this."

"All our lives."

The white room has materialised around him as he lies on the street, dazed and in pain. He struggles from the floor, and a sharp, brittle laughter comes from someone. John looks. The smirk is back.

"And if I refuse?" He asks, mockingly.

"Then I've got no choice but to stop you."

"You would kill me? John Watson. You are _wasted _on Good."


	3. Big Brother

**Chapter three: Big Brother**

"It's happening again, John."

He had thought about opening his eyes. But, at this, motivation disappeared in a flash of lethargy.

"Dr Watson, you are _awake._"

No. No he wasn't. Not if he pretended otherwise.

Mycroft made a noise that sounded horribly like 'tut', and when he continued speaking, some of his government polish was gone.

"I could do without your tenacity today."

John squinted. The room wasn't too shabby. It didn't smell like disinfectant. It was...comfortable; though undoubtedly a hospital. There was a drip in his arm. A peripheral IV line stuck out of his left hand. And the bed was railed; like he would roll out of it or something. Or try to escape. Mycroft wouldn't put it past him.

A wall length window allowed streams of weak sunlight over him. They were unusual windows.

John started. Was that _French Windows? _

"Where am I?"

Taking a deep breath in was a mistake. Pain screamed in his chest. When the initial shock faded, he re-evaluated the injury. Nothing too intense, nothing serious, he thought, but unpleasant enough all the same. Fractured ribs, he would hazard a guess.

"What happened to me?"

For the first time, John looked at his visitor. Mycroft wasn't his sharp, professional self. He looked like a man who had spent a good part of the previous night wide awake and working. Behind his sculpted expression of togetherness lay something else. And then, with a flourish, it was gone.

"Deadly Nightshade is what happened. And 2 fractured ribs, I believe."

"That..." John struggled through the remains of his morphine stupor. "What?"

"You were given, at some point yesterday, a generous amount of the toxic, deliriant plant Atropa Belladonna_; _More commonly known as Deadly Nightshade. You join the dots, _Doctor._"

John wheezed, propping himself on the ample pile of pillows beneath him. Mycroft's face betrayed nothing.

"Where's Sherlock?"

"Outside. Sulking, I imagine."

"Ah...so, whatever this is about...he knows?"

"Oh, he is well aware."

John nods slowly. "What then?"

"A sudden influx of criminals on The City of London is what."

John's lip twitches in amusement, and Mycroft doesn't miss it. Of course he doesn't.

"If you think this is in any way amusing –" He stops to scowl. The conversation isn't going how he'd planned. And Mycroft does love for things to go as planned.

"Not at all," John grins, ignoring the pulsing pain in his chest. "Carry on."

"Their motive is, as of yet, unclear. We can be certain that their target is Sherlock. That much is obvious. From there we know only that they are small of number and armed to the teeth: A skilled assassin, identity unknown; an ex-convict who I believe you have met; several high-profile thieves. I could go on."

"Please do."

John had his eyes shut again.

Mycroft seethed quietly and continued. "The assembled criminals come from various backgrounds, and seem to have only one thing in common, other than their _careers _and their current locations._"_

"What's that then?"

"They all have a reason to want Sherlock dead."

A raised eyebrow in Mycroft's general direction is met with icy irritation. "I am quite serious. The threat is real, and your attitude is frustratingly lax."

"Really, though," John reasons, "London's full of these people. What's so bloody threatening about this lot?"

"It is no coincidence. They're closing in. It was this alliance that was responsible for your...capture. That have confirmed what we theorized: they're working together. Our sources show that the criminal class in general are growing tired of _The Detective Threat; _as they so delightfully call it. Now they've made a move. That makes it our turn."

John fell back on his pillows, Mycroft's voice ringing on soberly.

"If they are not challenged, I fear it is in their capabilities to win."

It did nothing to ease the threads of panic that had started to weave into John's consciousness.

"They won't win."

"There is no room for wishful thinking, John. They must be stopped."

"Right, so what do we do?"

"You will do nothing."

"You can't be serious."

"You will carry on as normal. You will stay calm. And, most importantly, you will make certain that Sherlock does the same."

There is a moment where they look witheringly at each other. It's an understanding. They both know what's important here.

"Goodbye, Dr Watson."

With a nod of the head, he leaves the room.

* * *

The nurse was pretty. He couldn't help but notice that. She just smiled as Sherlock went off on a full-scale Mycroft rant. She had freckles, and dark blonde hair.

"Are you even listening to me?"

"Eh?"

It wasn't the most dignified thing to say, and he tried to hide his embarrassment from the woman who was now scribbling on his medical chart. She didn't look up.

"John?"

Sherlock had pulled his chair up so close that he was practically on John's lap.

"Shaun Idle: He's part of this."

John tore his eyes away from the nurse, concentrating instead on the tray of food that had just arrived. "That arsonist engineer?"

"Yes, him. I've already covered this." Sherlock really had sulked, apparently.

"Are you sure? He was arrested, I remember. We were there."

"That was a while ago. No fatalities, so the judge went easy on him. Are you going to eat that?"

John prods at a gourmet-looking meal in front of him. He didn't particularly feel like eating, but it did seem a shame to waste it.

"Is this your brother's private hospital?"

Sherlock, who had talked quickly, stopped. "He doesn't own hospitals."

The nurse had left. He wished she hadn't, but then it's not like they could have had a conversation with Sherlock babbling about serial killers and arsonists in the background anyway.

"But he does have unlimited access to them..."

It was somewhere between the potatoes and carrots: A tiny slip of paper.

It caught his eye at last-minute, narrowly avoiding a fate of dinner.

John looked up at Sherlock.

"and you know he would. It's so transparent it's laughable. Does he really think I'm so naïve?"

He hasn't noticed. Of course, it's not in his eye line. But still.

John flattens it out, carefully. He doesn't know why he's hiding it. It just seems the right thing to do.

The words are pencil, scribbled down in small, near unintelligible letters.

After a moment's speculation, it makes perfect sense.

A message:

"Half moon, midday, tomorrow. Be alone."


End file.
